1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a tape application device for applying a strip form adhesive tape along a tape application surface formed on a work, with removing from a release liner. This application is based on Patent Application No. 9-315075 (1997) filed Nov. 17, 1997 in Japan, the content of which is incorporated hereinto by reference.
2. Description of the Related Art
Painting eggshell black on the inside and the outside of a door sash of an automotive vehicle is desirable for restricting reflection of light of the door sash as viewed externally, particularly from the side portion of a vehicle body to certainly provide a neat appearance of not only the interior, but also of the whole vehicle body.
For this purpose, conventional apparatuses spray paint eggshell black paint on the door sash portion of a vehicle. However, spray painting encounters various problems, such as by requiring investment for additional facility for maintaining an adequate work environment, taking a long period for drying paint, and so forth. As a solution for such drawback, Japanese Patent Application Laying-open No. 51-135015 (1976) or Japanese Patent Application Laying-open No. 62-46780 (1987) proposes application of eggshell black adhesive tape having high weather resistance and high wear resistance on a door sash portion, in place. In such case, as is well known, since the majority of the door sash portion of an automotive vehicle consists of a three-dimensional curved portion, the above-mentioned adhesive tape application apparatus inherently becomes large scale. Also, when such an adhesive tape application apparatus is installed in a practical production line, an investment for production line becomes huge. In addition, such an adhesive tape application apparatus has poor flexibility in adapting to modification of design of the door sash portion, and has poor general-purpose properties.
It can be considered that the operation for application of the adhesive tape is performed manually by the worker without using any device. However, in order to accurately perform applying operation at a speed adapted to the production line of the automotive vehicle, quite high skill is required.
Thus, there has been proposed in Japanese Patent Application Laying-open No. 5-338627 (1993), a tape application device which can easily and quickly perform application of the adhesive tape without requiring high skill of the worker. By employing the tape application device, the adhesive tape can be accurately applied at a predetermined position of the door sash portion easily and quickly without requiring high skill of the worker. In addition, apparatuses for automatically assembling a weather-strip onto the door sash, such as those disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laying-open No. 2-221582 (1990), Japanese Patent Application Laying-open No. 3-166068 (1991) or Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 5-65298 (1993), may be employed.
In the conventional tape application device, disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laying-open No. 5-338627 (1993), there is a right-cut device and a left-cut device adapted to a right side door and a left side door of the automotive vehicle. Therefore, in case of sedan type passenger vehicle, for example, four kinds of tape application devices, respectively, for a left front door, a left rear door, a right front door and a right rear door have to be used selectively, thereby making tape applying operation complicate and troublesome. Furthermore, such a structure is complicated and requires large number of parts, thereby increasing to increase manufacturing cost.
On the other hand, when the weather-strip mounting apparatus disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laying-open No. 2-221582 (1990), Japanese Patent Application Laying-open No. 3-166068 (1991) or Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 5-65298 (1993) is applied for the tape application device, a space becomes necessary for installation of a manipulator in addition for spaces required for holding a door panel and a positioning device. Therefore, the manufacturing line cannot be adapted for further requirement of the space unless modifying the manufacturing line of the automotive vehicle.